2012-13 women’s basketball schedule

Today, to take our minds off the football team’s poor showing last night, I thought it might be nice to talk about a different sport. Fortunately for us, EMU announced the basketball schedules this week, and today we’ll consider the women’s schedule.

The pre-season will consist of a pair of home exhibition games, against Madonna on Friday, November 2, and against Wayne State on Tuesday, November 6.

The team will then open the regular season with a five-game homestand, hosting Northeastern (November 11), Michigan State (November 15), Detroit (November 18, a doubleheader with the men’s basketball team), Boston University (November 23 — the evening after Thanksgiving, for a football-basketball doubleheader!) and Harvard (November 24, a doubleheader with the men’s basketball team). They’ll then head on the road for games at Butler, Wyoming, and South Dakota State, before returning to host Michigan for the third straight season (and hopefully the third straight win!) on Tuesday, December 11. Then they go on the road again for games at Missouri-Kansas City and the Tulane Holiday Tournament (December 29-30, against Tulane and either McNeese State or Mississippi). The non-conference schedule closes Saturday, January 5, at home against Loyola-Chicago.

Key dates in the MAC schedule include Wednesday, January 16 against Toledo, Sunday, January 20 at Miami, Sunday, January 27 against 2012 regular-season champ Bowling Green, Saturday, February 23 against Western Michigan (a doubleheader with the men’s basketball team), Sunday, March 3 at Toledo, and ending the season at home, Wednesday, March 6, against Central Michigan.

It’s great to beat a Michigan Wolverine…and it never gets old, either! This was December 2011.

In terms of difficulty, Michigan State, Detroit, and Tulane should be good, while Boston University (America East) and South Dakota State (Summit) were regular-season conference champions last year. Michigan, Michigan State, South Dakota State, and McNeese State were NCAA tournament participants in 2012, with Michigan the highest seed at #10; none of them won their opening round game.

On the whole, this is a solid schedule, with a non-conference portion challenging enough to help the team develop without leaving them exhausted mid-season. The games against the toughest teams both in and out of the conference are mostly at home (Michigan State, Michigan, Detroit, Boston University, McNeese State, and Bowling Green) or on neutral sites (McNeese State), with Tulane and South Dakota State as the only true road challenges; there’s nothing on this schedule on par with the difficulty of playing at Green Bay last year, for example.